Aimed at promoting financing for environmentally friendly, CABEI launched the CAMBio and ARECA Projects for Central American Intermediary Financial Institutions.

As one of its most important contributions to sustainable development of the countries of the Central American Region, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration is implementing the initiatives “Central American Markets for Biodiversity (CAMBio)” and “Accelerating Investments in Renewable Energy in Central America (ARECA)”.

CAMbio supports Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MIPYMES, in Spanish) that protect and preserve biodiversity in their businesses, products and services.

ARECA’s objective is to encourage the financing of small renewable energy projects (less than 10MW) to increase access to energetic services for the inhabitants of the region, while reducing greenhouse emissions effects.

In this field, CABEI will develop different funding and guarantee mechanisms, that financial institutions that participate in the Bank’s intermediary network will be able to use to finance biodiversity-friendly business initiatives, as well as small renewable energy projects, among which, a partial credit guarantees mechanism which will contribute to reducing financial barriers that hinder the development of small renewable energy projects and biodiversity friendly productive activities, in sectors such as agriculture, forestry, tourism, fish farming, and fishery.

In the months of September and October a series of workshops will be held inHonduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Panama aimed at promoting both projects and encouraging the Central American Banking System to finance biodiversity friendly businesses and renewable energy co-generation.

About CAMBio and ARECA

The main purpose of the project Central American Markets for Biodiversity (CAMBio) is to prioritize the conservation of biodiversity and its sustainable uses in productive activities of Micro, Small and Medium-sized enterprises, that obtain funding through a broad net of intermediary financial institutions, using novel financial mechanisms.

The goal of the Project “Accelerating Investments in Energies in Central America” (ARECA) is to propel the development and implementation of small scale renewable energy projects in the Central American region, thus facilitating access to funding by sharing the risk with the commercial banks.

Both projects are tripartite iniciatives of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI). This way, all five countries in the region will benefit and, in the case of ARECA, so will Panama.